FINALIST

News Globus

News Globus has a physical interface that piques the curiosity of people and asks them to explore the world not by news of a single place, but by the relationships between places.

The shape of the globe is an interesting artifact from the past which was combined with modern technologies and online services. Instead of allowing people to hear the news of one place, the audio jacks bring to mind the metaphor of the phone operator to get people to discover surprising connections between places near and far from each other.

The News Globus has an Arduino MKR-1000 inside the globe wired to 20 assigned regions. When two regions are connected, the Arduino selects a country randomly from each region and queries the NY Times API for news containing both locations. A web server then selects a story and converts the headline and byline to a mp3 file which is played either from the headphone jack or the base of the globe.

JUDGES,COMMENTS

This globe is fun. It shows how small our earth is, we could eavesdrop countries around the world from a single ball by merely plugging and unplugging connections. Besides, it looks strangely beautiful at the same time.